Well, Martel, its hard to find a straight answer. The people who are anti-Israel tell you things about how Hamas has every right to attack Israel, and the people who are pro-Israel tell you how the world is unjust to Israel and they have every right to defend themselves from the aggressive Hamas.

If you go by the numbers, Israel gets attacked more often, but kills many more people in retaliation with less attacks.

I've been pro-Israel for a very long time... I just try to remain informed on all sides of any issue I talk about From what I've seen, Israel makes honest efforts at peace and the militant Muslims throw it back in their face. But that's just my perception of the facts I've seen.

Ahh, I see, well, thanks for that info. Honestly, as for the retaliation, I think any side that gets attacked first with things like missiles and bombs has every right to use as much force as necessary to stop it from continuing. I have a strong belief that no matter how many words you say or how loud you say them it's not going to throw that missile heading for your head off coarse.

I don't think building settlements the United Nations declared illegal in land that is recognized as Palestinian, then building a wall that cuts through Palestinian territory and cities cutting off people from their places of employment, families, etc, is really an 'honest effort at peace'.

The problem is both sides have hardliners that want to keep fighting it out and not make any compromizes. Both sides are in the wrong in my not-so-humble opinion. *shrug*

The Jews are there. They've been there since just after World War 2. They forced their way in (not the best course of action when viewed from the modern political stage) and fought for the territory against Muslim armies who didn't want them to be there, and won. So they're there. At that point, the two possible courses of action are: acceptance and peace, or genocide. The last 60 years has shown definitively that the chosen course of action against Israel is genocide.

There have been long years of peace, but repeatedly the Jews have been shown that, given the chance, their neighbors would wipe them off the face of the planet. I'd be a little aggressive with grabbing buffer zones and doing everything possible to defend my people and my territory if I was in their shoes, too.

Granted, I'm former military and I feel the same way about my house. If there were constant threats and attacks on my house, you're damn right I'd be building a wall around it for defense, and given the reason and opportunity, I'd be building another wall on nearby land that doesn't belong to me, too. Chastise me, fine me, whatever you feel like doing, I'm going to do whats necessary to protect me and mine. So when I say "honest effort at peace", I mean they stop shooting when they say they're going to stop shooting- hoping the other side will do the same.

I do have to agree with you that there are hardliners on both sides who don't want to compromise, though, and that's a huge source of tension that helps keep the fighting going.

I'm not overly enamored with the nation of Israel. But compared to their neighbors, they're a light on a hilltop. Hell, at least Israel regards women as fully human, which puts them above nine-tenths of the Muslim world right there.

Jews have a longer historical presence in the Middle East than Muslims do. So I think the Muslim world needs to stop whining about the precious 1.5% or so of "their" land that Jews currently live on, and focus on entering the modern era. I have a hard time with nations that stone rape victims to death and forbid women from driving or being out alone lecturing others on human rights issues.

First off, not all muslim nations 'stone rape victims' or 'don't allow women to drive'. Nice attempt to blanket all muslims as orthodox extremists though.

So really, if say a group of people just moved into say, maryland over the course of a couple decades. Started bombing and shooting the authorities and formed a militia to overthrow the government, then forced a few million Marylanders out of their homes, made the few that remained second-class citizens, and then built a wall around their territory, cutting into Washington DC even though that's been declared by the word as territory belonging to the United States, we should just get over it. Really it isn't much territory right? We've got plenty of other land. And well, those poor marylanders... well we don't really want them in Pennsylvania, but we'll let 'em live in some camps in the south of our state until they can finda new home somewhere else.

I mean come on. Light on top of the hill? What a laugh! In orthodox Jewry, women have stupid rules just like in orthodox islam. They have to stay away from their husbands when menstruating and for seven days after. Dress modestly. Women's prayer groups are forbidden by most circles, in religious court women can't serve as witnesses, etc etc. Totally enlightened.

Jews have a longer presence in the Middle East? Yeah, maybe because Islam was only created in 627 AD while Judaism is estimated to have been founded around 2000 BC. Nice straw-man argument there though of course if you actually compare the ETHNIC groups and not an ethnic group vs a religion (Muslim is not an ethnicity, it's the name given to a follower of Islam). Most of the ethnic groups that adopted Islam lived in the middle east just as long as the jewish groups.

Israel hardly deserves to be placed on some kind of pedestal. I'm not saying the Arab nations surrounding it do either. I'm saying both sides are wrong, both sides need to stop fighting and learn to fucking live together without killing each other and treat each other with the same dignity and respect they'd give to their own people.

I'm uncomfortable with the notion that a nation's domestic politics has any bearing on their use of force. America has a lot of problems with how it conducts itself domestically, and it rankles when people bring that up as a factor in whether the USA is morally justified to intervene in conflicts abroad. This is not to say one should not be critical of a nation's domestic politics and cultural attitudes. It is rather to say that it should have no bearing on the morality of an intervention.

The reason being, interventions have a moral bearing all on their own. Just because a nation is more humanitarian to its own people than the nation they are attacking does not justify the actions undertaken in the intervention. And more to the point, nations that are distinguished in their embrace of egalitarian, democratic principles can still inflict tremendously vicious acts of force in an intervention.

For example, I don't think Japanese internment camps rendered our military action against Japan to be morally wrong. By that same token, though the USA was a more egalitarian and democratic nation than fascist Japan, it deliberately attacked civilian populations as part of a strategy to break the enemy nation's will to fight.

If one removes the domestic attitudes and principles of an intervening nation from judging whether an intervention is moral, then the question becomes an evaluation of the intervention itself. Factors then become - how necessary is this level of force in response? How likely is the strategy it is instrumental to capable of achieving a lasting peace?

Looking at the case of Israel's recent attack against the Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories, one has to wonder at the intent of the force. Israel, in this instance and in many recent instances, has a tendency to pursue a strategy of total warfare - attacking the civil sector of the enemy territory to paralyze and demoralize it, along with attacking specific military objectives. Many would argue that Israel's strategy goes too far in this regard - that Israel intends to cripple their surrounding states in order to make certain they cannot pose even the slightest potential threat.

Others would argue that Israel's strategy is, while harsh, for the greater good of preserving peace. They say that since Israel is capable of bringing such massive force to bear in order to ensure not only the minimal loss of lives on its own side and the achievement of its military objectives, but also to ensure the infrastructure is so shattered that the state can never effectively marshal arms against them. This, they argue, preserves Israel's military dominance best.

The problem I have with this latter argument is that the situation in the Occupied Territories is untenable; it cannot survive for long as it is. The Occupied Territories are largely dependent on foreign aid. They have exploding populations and increasingly limited space. Their basic human needs - water, power, commerce - are extremely restricted. It is, in essence, like a state of siege that only gets worse with time.

One "solution" to the Palestinian's woes, is for them to sign whatever peace accords Israel presents to them. But even this is likely untenable considering that any two-state solution would need to reverse many of the physical restrictions that Israel's location places on the Palestinian population, and provisions for this have not been made in the accords.

So, given that such a resolution is not likely, Israel will have to change its strategy. It cannot merely obliterate and restrict the Palestinian means of survival indefinitely. This is why Israel's actions are flawed: Not because a strategy of total warfare is flawed in and of itself. It would be a different matter if all the suffering this thread addressed was moving to a viable conclusion. Given that it is not, and that Israel still employs devastating amounts of force to ensure a destablized and unsurvivable Palestinian state, Israel is wrong in its actions.

I want the best for Israel and the Palestinians both. It cannot be achieved without some "end game" other than having one state starving and subject to the other's will.

A lot of the problem stem from the quality of the land. Not just it's religious nature, but the actual arable acreage of it. Land that can be cultivated is so rare in those deserts that every last foot is valuable , more valuable than the oil under it.

And THAT is a lot of what this war truly stems from. Who controls the viable land.